Sermon Transcript
All the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the law to bring out the book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel. So on the first day of the 7th month Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women, and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.
Ezra the teacher of the law stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. Beside him on his right stood Mattithiah, Shema, Aniah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah. And on his left were Padaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashum, Heshbaddena, Zechariah, and Meshullam. Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them.
And as he opened it, the people all stood up. Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, And all the people lifted their hands and responded, amen, amen. Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. The Levites, Jeshua, Bani, Sherubiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shebethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, and Pelaiah instructed the people in the law while the people were standing there. They read from the book of the law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.
Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep. For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the law. Nehemiah said, go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord.
Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. The Levites calmed all the people saying, be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve. Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy. Because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.
Hey everybody, I have a question for you today. Do you ever stop to read, and I mean really, really read with great scrutiny, those terms of service agreements that are put in front of you whenever you buy a new product or you install an update for your phone or sign up for some type of new service? I’m gonna go on ahead and answer this question for what I estimate to be about 99% of you who are watching this. No, you don’t really read those things with great scrutiny. You’re like me.
Depending upon what’s at stake and the amount of money that’s involved, we usually just scroll down, skim, click yes here, sign there, initial here, and then we just move on to something else without thinking about it ever again. It’s agreement without any emotion or commitment. Attached. Nobody ever tells their friends, you’ve got to read this great terms of service agreement that I read earlier today, it’s amazing. Nobody ever posts their favorite quote from a terms of service agreement on their social media account.
No publishing company is creating cute little coffee table books filled with inspirational lines from great terms of service agreements throughout history. No, we read and we acknowledge these things, and then we move on. Sadly, I think that there are times when we approach God’s Word like that, like it’s a terms of service document that’s filled with impersonal legalese that doesn’t really apply to us or have anything to say to us today. We’ll read it or we’ll listen to someone talk about it, maybe think about it for a moment or two, but then quickly forget about it and move on to something else.
Again, it’s agreement with little or no emotion or commitment attached or involved. Thankfully, God’s relationship with his people is not like that. It’s not like a terms of service agreement. In fact, God’s relationship with us is really more like a marriage, which then makes the covenant document between him and us, his word, not like an impersonal terms of service contract, but really much, much more like wedding vows. Wedding vows are sacred promises made in love, deep commitments.
Couples speak wedding vows on their wedding day with joy and sincerity and promise and usually quite a bit of naivete, not fully understanding exactly what they’re signing up for or committing to, which is why then couples often renew their vows at later stages of their relationship to reaffirm their commitment to one another. What you just heard read a moment ago from today’s text is essentially a vow renewal ceremony. God’s people are gathered together badly needing to be reminded of the promises that God had made to them centuries before, but also badly in need of renewing their own commitment to God. And the setting of this particular vow renewal ceremony is unique It’s not taking place in Las Vegas at some cheesy wedding chapel that’s officiated by a guy dressed up like Elvis. No, it’s taking place, of all places, in Jerusalem, where the city has just barely been rebuilt.
The walls have just barely been repaired, where piles of rubble have replaced what used to be homes, and there are physical reminders everywhere they look, all around them, of all of the destruction that they and their ancestors have caused. Caused, consequences of the vows that they and their ancestors have broken. They’d been wretchedly unfaithful in their covenant relationship with God, and here they are now in chapter 8 of Nehemiah surrounded by stark reminders of their infidelity. But God in his mercy is offering them a fresh start. This isn’t just a vow renewal ceremony in Nehemiah 8 though.
It’s really a, if you think about it’s spiritual renewal ceremony. The word we frequently use to describe spiritual renewal in the life of an individual or a group of people is revival. A spiritual revival is a spiritual reawakening from a state of dormancy or stagnation in the life of a believer. It’s a recommitment. Just like we can have seasons of life as couples that pull us from away from each other emotionally and can cause us to take the other person for granted or to forget or to even lose our first love, we too have seasons where we can get into a rut, spiritually speaking, where we lose our first love for God when we allow other things in our life to take greater priority than our relationship with God.
And when we forget just how needy and desperate we are for God’s mercy and forgiveness and just how great a gift salvation really is. Now, I grew up going to church personally, and I can remember experiencing revival a few times. If you grew up in the South like I did and you attended church, you know exactly what I’m talking about. They usually bring in a guest speaker. There’d be lots of singing and lots of preaching.
And I can remember a couple times even going to what’s called a tent revival. If you don’t know what that is, just Google it. But there would be ads in the paper and flyers sent out and announcements made, come experience revival at our church Monday through Thursday, 7 o’clock to 8:30, or something like that. They were called revival services, and they were planned, and they were scheduled.
That, however, is not true biblical revival. True biblical revival is not typically something planned or scheduled out on the calendar 3 weeks from now. This is what true biblical spiritual revival and renewal is. It’s always about 2 things: the people of God returning to the Word of God. It’s the people of God returning to the Word of God.
That is and always has been and always will be the key to spiritual renewal— God’s people returning to the Word of God. What do I mean? In every genuine spiritual revival in history, there has always been a renewed emphasis on the Bible, God’s Word, and it has always resulted in renewed changed lives. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Down through the centuries, God’s people have gone through cycles where his word has been neglected and the spiritual condition of his people deteriorates.
And in his grace, God sends renewal. We see it in the book of Exodus when Moses delivers the law of God to the people. We see it in 2 Kings chapters 22 and 23 when King Josiah rediscovers the law and then reads the law to the people in Jerusalem. We see it in the book of Acts and in the spread of the gospel that results in Christian churches spreading up all over the region. We see it during the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 1500s.
It happened in Scotland through John Knox, also in the 1500s. It happened in the First Great Awakening in the 1700s. Also happened in the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. And it’s happening here in Nehemiah chapter 8. Revival and spiritual renewal and the people of God returning to the Word of God have always gone hand in hand.
When Nehemiah chapter 7 ends, we just expect the whole book to end. We don’t expect there to be a chapter 8. And why not? The wall project has been completed. The people have moved into their own dwellings.
And according to chapter 7, which we looked at just last week with Pastor Dan, the people were now well ordered well-defended, and well-governed. They had a new neighborhood and good jobs, and they felt safe, but there was still something missing. They had forgotten God’s Word and were in need of spiritual renewal. The material needs of the city had been met, but the purpose of returning to Jerusalem and constructing a wall was never to just have a new wall. That wasn’t the end goal, or at least it wasn’t God’s end goal.
God’s end goal was not just to reconstruct a wall, but more than that, to reconstruct the people, to remind them of his covenant love and offer them again in his mercy a fresh beginning. And notice how he did it. He did it, as we heard just a few moments ago in the text, through the proclamation and teaching of his word. Let’s remember that the people had just come back to Jerusalem after having been in captivity for 70 years, and because of that, a few generations of people had grown up essentially biblically illiterate and spiritually apathetic. They didn’t have access to Bibles or Bible apps on their phones, and they hadn’t had access to the temple when they were in exile.
So again, they were badly in need of revival and recommitment. So to help lead this revival, God raises up a priest and a scribe named Ezra. Ezra had been the second of 3 key leaders to return to Jerusalem after the exile. There had been 3 waves of people after the exile to come back into Jerusalem. Zerubbabel was the first key leader, led the first wave of people a few years before, and he had led in the reconstruction of the temple.
We already know about Nehemiah, the third key leader who led the third wave of people. We’ve been reading about him. He had led in the reconstruction of the walls. But now we’re gonna meet Ezra and get more familiar with him. He was the second key leader, and we’re gonna see him in action, whose calling it was to restore the worship in accordance with God’s law and to lead the people back to God.
And this was, according to the text, a really appropriate time for this vow renewal, spiritual renewal ceremony. It says in verse 2 that the ceremony took place on the first day of the 7th month, which was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish equivalent of New Year’s Day. This was the perfect time for the people to get right with the Lord and to start over. Now, even though these events in Nehemiah took place 2,500 years ago, I think they have great import for us today. Here’s why.
All of us, I mean all of us, have times when we just go through the motions spiritually. All of us have times when we just seem to drift into a kind of lifelessness and lethargy and backsliding and indifference. In fact, maybe you’re in such a season right now. Right now. So what can we learn from this occasion in Nehemiah chapter 8?
What exactly happened at this spiritual renewal, vow renewal ceremony that can help us today to come back to life spiritually speaking? I would suggest it’s the exact same sequence of things that take place anytime people experience true revival. And it’s the exact same responses that we should have whenever we gather as God’s God’s people. The first thing we see in this text that the people did that enabled them to be able to experience spiritual renewal is that it says the people gathered expectantly. The people gathered expectantly.
Who was there? Verse 2 says that there were men and women and all who were able to understand, which meant that all generations, including children, were present and gathered there. And that’s a picture of the church, not the building itself, but the people of God. And these folks were ready. They were ready for worship.
They were ready for renewal. They were gathered expectantly. They even had a high wooden platform for Ezra to stand on that had been, it says, specifically built for this particular occasion. And notice that nobody had to call these people all together. Nobody had to motivate them.
Nobody had to twist their arms to come and to show up. Why? Well, possibly because they had just witnessed witnessed an incredible miracle with the wall, the kind of thing that could have never happened unless God had supernaturally intervened. And the response to that was to say, we long for God to do something like that again and to do it in us. Notice that Ezra didn’t just start by launching into a sermon.
He was evidently taking requests. And what the people most requested and wanted at this time was for Ezra to bring out the book. They said, bring out the book, bring out the book. Of the Law of Moses. They weren’t all that interested in Ezra’s opinions.
They wanted God’s Word read to them, and that’s it. Why? Because it was their departure from the Word that had gotten them into their mess in the first place. This was their mindset as they gathered. They were absolutely confident that God would speak to them through his Word.
It says in verse 1 that they came together as one. In other words, even though we don’t know exactly how many of them were there, they came together in a spirit of unity, having the same focus, same intentions, and the same desires as one another. And this is how we are supposed to gather today, whether it’s gathering in person for worship altogether, physically speaking, or gathering as we’ve been doing online for the past year, and as we’re going to continue to be able to do while also having in-person gatherings. Lord willing. Willing.
But when we gather in person or we gather online for worship or the reading of God’s Word, there shouldn’t be separate agendas. That doesn’t mean that we should always agree about everything. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a particular burden or a need that is on your heart at— on a particular day. What it does mean is that our primary, our primary focus should always be the same whenever we gather, and that is that we prayerfully anticipate and expect God to speak to us, we expect him to convict us, and we expect him to change us. Now, I’ve personally experienced this in both directions.
I’ve been in a room with hundreds of other Christ followers at the same time and sensed a spirit of oneness and unity of purpose that only God can produce in that kind of diverse group of people. But I’ve also, on the other hand, been in a room with a few handful of Christ followers and sensed a spirit of separateness and division so thick you could cut it with a knife. The number of the people, the number of the people in the room really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re all on the same page in terms of our desires and our devotion. We don’t gather as a church for the primary purpose of accommodating each of our personal and individual preferences.
We gather for the primary purpose of worshiping God with one heart, one mind, and one voice, and to be renewed in our devotion and faith commitment as we hear God’s God speak to us. Now, if there isn’t that sense of expectation and anticipation like we see here in the people whenever we gather for worship, or if you or I are distracted by other concerns that are secondary at best, then you and I will likely miss what God specifically wants to say to you or to do in your life. This is something we need to pray about, and we need to pray about constantly, that God would capture and change our hearts when we come together to worship. That God would enable us to place our focus on what matters most and for God to make us one. Don’t come passively whenever we gather.
Don’t come passively whenever you come to God’s word or hear it preached. Don’t come passively. Come expectantly. The people gathered expectantly. The second thing we see that the people did here is that the people listened attentively.
Now we know from experience, having ears that work doesn’t automatically guarantee that you actually hear, right? Spend some time watching a married couple or spend some time with me and Shannon. You’ll witness this firsthand. We often miss what the other person is saying because our minds are elsewhere or we lose our attention or because we’re in a hurry or because let’s admit it, we choose not to hear what the other person is saying. We do that with people.
And we do that with God. Verse 3, though, says that the people listened attentively to the book of the law. And this was no small feat if you think about it, because it says that Ezra was reading from— get this— from daybreak, dawn, until noon. So he was reading for at least 6 hours. And you thought my sermons were long.
But not only that, according to verse 18, this same thing apparently continued for a week. The people just kept coming back for more and more of the same, the reading of God’s Word. And it’s not like Ezra was giving a TED Talk here. He was reading from the law, the Torah, which is the first 5 books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Which is incredibly important and foundational as those books are, let’s be honest, they can be pretty daunting to navigate and to hold your attention all the way through, or at least for 6 hours at a time.
Nevertheless, the people, it says, listened attentively. Why? Perhaps because many of them had not heard this kind of teaching for many, many years. Most of them probably never. They were blown away by what they were hearing.
They knew their nation had been founded on this stuff, but nobody had actually stood in front of them ever, read it, and explained it to them. And they were eating it up, listening attentively. Do you do that?
Is that how you are when you come to God’s Word, whether reading God’s Word for yourself or in a study or coming to a sermon or a message like this? Would you consider yourself attentive when it comes to hearing God speak to you throughout the course of the day? Is that typically your experience when you gather for church with other believers? For me, my personal experience is that this is sadly much more the exception than the norm. I’ve learned that it’s difficult for me to listen attentively to sermons and to God’s Word if I haven’t first prayed and prepared myself spiritually beforehand.
And I think that’s where the first point, the people gathering expectantly, comes in and ties into the gathering expectantly with listening attentively. These first 2 points are tied together. When you pray in advance of reading God’s Word or coming to church and you ask God to make you hungrier for more of him and to renew then you’re much more likely to hear God speak to you when the Word is taught. We honor the Lord when we give him our close attention. So the people gathered expectantly, they listened attentively, but third, the people responded properly.
First, they responded with worship, lifting up their hands and responding, amen, amen, which means they were wholeheartedly agreeing with what was being read. They’re saying, keep giving it to us as They also bowed down and worshiped with their faces to the ground. Their physical posture was revealing the response that was happening in their heart. With their lips, but also with their bodies, they were expressing humility and submission to what they were hearing. That was a proper and appropriate response.
They also responded, it says, with weeping and mourning. Why? Because they were expectant and because they were attentive as they gathered, God was now stirring in their hearts, convicting them of where they had been falling short. Maybe they began mourning when Ezra read Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 5, which says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. They would have been deeply grieved by this because they realized that they and their ancestors had not done that.
They had not loved God with all of their being. They had not put him first. They had wandered from him, abandoning their love and commitment for God by turning to other gods. And it was in hearing the word read aloud to them that exposed their compromise and their failures. So there was worship, there was conviction of sin, but lastly, they responded with obedience and kind deeds.
Verse 10 says that Ezra and Nehemiah reminded the people to send portions from the part of their sacrifices that they could eat to those who had nothing. Thing. And I, I love this. I think that this is a great callback to what we saw back a couple weeks ago in chapter 5, when last time I had the chance to preach. You may remember this, when the people recognized their guilt at that time in chapter 5 of having taken unfair advantage of the poor.
So then they made reparations and repaid the people what they had wrongfully taken from them in order to make things right.
And that’s what God’s word does. God’s word, when properly understood and properly responded to and applied into our lives, produces greater compassion in our hearts for other people. And if you leave, or if I leave, from having read God’s Word and from having gathered with other Christ followers and we don’t leave changed and we don’t leave with a greater compassionate heart, we’re not responding properly.
Remember that they were doing and experiencing all of these things, by the way, here in Nehemiah 8 through only a wooden platform a guy standing on it, and a scroll being read. That’s it. There weren’t pyrotechnics. There wasn’t, it appears, a worship band that we can tell. There wasn’t anything except God’s Word being read and then God speaking through his Word.
That’s amazing. I imagine you’re like me and have sometimes left a church service or have heard a sermon and thought, I didn’t get anything out of that. It’s amazing though how much more we get out of our experience at church our experience gathering with other Christ followers, and our experience in reading God’s Word when we are prayerfully expectant and when we are listening attentively. The converse, sadly, is also true. We cannot and we will not respond properly to God’s Word if we are not prayerfully expectant and if we are not individually listening attentively.
The 4th thing we see here that the people did is that the people departed joyfully. The people departed joyfully. They had gathered expectantly, they listened attentively, they responded properly, so naturally they left joyfully. Verse 12 says they departed joyfully because they understood the words from the law that had been made known to them. And that’s the way it ought to happen every time we come together again, whether in person or virtually through an online service.
It should always happen this way. Now, how could they move so quickly from sorrow and mourning to joy? I think the answer is in verse 10, which Nehemiah tells the people to stop grieving because, quote, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Now, there’s a brief translation issue here that I think we need to address, and I don’t want you to miss this because this is amazing. Almost every English translation of verse verse 10 says, the joy of the Lord is your strength.
Almost every English translation says that. The original word used here for strength is a very common Hebrew word, but this is the only time that it’s ever interpreted as strength. The rest of the time it’s usually translated as either refuge or protection or shelter or fortress or something like that. So then why doesn’t verse 10 here say, the joy of the Lord is your refuge, or the joy of the Lord is your protection. And you’re like, who cares, right?
Big deal. Well, let’s remember that the people are crying and they’re broken up because of their guilt over having broken the terms of their covenant with God. But while that was a natural response, Ezra and Nehemiah are saying, don’t weep, don’t mourn, because the joy of the Lord should give you strength today. Now here’s a question: is the joy of the Lord that he’s talking about meant to be your joy or is it meant to be the Lord’s joy over you? The text doesn’t entirely make it clear, but given the whole counsel of Scripture, I’m going to suggest that Nehemiah intended it to be the second answer.
He’s talking about the Lord’s joy over you. Why? Because while weeping and feeling regret over sin is a very reasonable response, in another sense it’s not a reasonable response because it shows a lack of awareness of God’s posture towards you and towards me when we fall short. And what we need to remember and cling to is the truth that God’s response towards his people is joy.
Yes, he is a just God who executes justice on the earth. Yes, he punishes sin, but his ultimate covenant purposes are to forgive and to rejoice over his people, as Zephaniah 3:17 says, when they turn to him. Him. So what Nehemiah was saying to the people in verse 10, and what I think that this passage is meant to communicate to those of us who live in 2021 who so badly need spiritual renewal and revival, is that God has not given up on you.
He is faithful to his covenant. He’s faithful to his vows, even when you and I are not. He takes delight in you. He sent his one and only Son Jesus to the earth to express just how much he loves you. And Jesus demonstrated his love for us in that even while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us, took our place on the cross to forgive us of our sins.
It’s the personal knowledge and experience of God’s joy towards us then that makes us strong, not physical walls. That doesn’t make us strong. What makes us strong is the Lord’s joy over us. God’s joy gives us strength by reminding us that we can run to him. We don’t have to run from him.
And God’s joy gives us strength by reminding us that God has found a solution to our sin problem. And we have a sin problem and we need it remedied, and God has made that possible. God’s strength gives us joy by showing us that he has provided a way back to him and an open invitation to start again. And God’s joy gives us strength for living life on this earth, knowing that our names, if you have made a profession of faith in Jesus for salvation and for eternal life, are written in heaven. Yes, our own personal records of vow-breaking and unfaithfulness are significant.
They’re endless. We have broken our covenant with God again and again and again and again and again and again. Jesus, however, was and is the perfect vow keeper. He took on our vow-breaking record and he invites us, he invites you even today to live freely in relationship with him and to have his life in you.
How are you going to respond to this invitation?
There are only 3 possible answers. If you are a Christ-follower, a proper response to a text like this would be to just spend some time with God telling God, God, I need you to renew me, to give me a clean heart and to renew my commitment to you. Thank you, God, that you have not left my side, that you have not given up on me, Fill me with your Spirit and remind me of your joy over me as your child. That’s a proper response. That is one response to this invitation to say, God, revive me.
A second possible response are for those of you who are watching who might not be a Christ follower, or you’re not sure you’re a Christ follower. When a person makes a profession of faith in Jesus for salvation, what they’re asking is to die to themselves and for Jesus to come into their life and to change them from the inside out. And you can’t be revived if you’ve never received eternal life in the first place. You can’t receive a reawakening and this revival in your life if you’re still dead in your sins and your trespasses, as the book of Ephesians tells us. We are all born into sin, and our sins separate us eternally from God.
And for those who are not Christ followers, our sins separate us from God, and the wages of that sin is eternal separation apart from God.
And so the way out of that is to profess faith in Jesus and to believe what Jesus did on the cross is sufficient enough to save you. Ask him to forgive you and to come into your life. You can’t be revived if you’ve never had eternal life to begin with. And you can make that decision today. That’s an appropriate response, and you can do that even right now.
Just be honest with God and say, God, come into my life for the first time. Change me from the inside out. There’s also a third response that many people will take, and that is to hear a message like this and to leave unchanged, and to say, I don’t want anything to do about that. I’m gonna stay in the state that I’m in.
Many people will, will do that. Jesus talked about the narrow road and how few people will follow him through on that commitment to following Jesus all the days of their life. Most people take the broad road, but that broad road, while it is wide, leads to destruction, eternal destruction. Very many people will travel on that road, but God is calling you and I to the narrow road of following him. What is your response to this invitation to be revived and to receive God’s joy over you today?
It’s my hope and my desire and my prayer that you will respond saying, yes, amen, amen. God, do this in me. Change me from the inside out. Let’s pray.
Father, I want to thank you for this text and how it reminds us that you are faithful even whenever we are not. I simply ask that you would forgive me of my sins and renew a right spirit within me where I am falling short and where I am missing the mark. Turn my heart, God, back to you. And for all who are listening, I don’t know what their response is going to be, but I pray, Holy Spirit, you would draw them to yourself. I can’t do that, but you, by your Holy Spirit, can do something new in their life.
And I pray that you would do that. That would be something that would be lasting and permanent and something that they would apply to their life and never, ever, ever forget. At, to wake up each day giving thanks that we wake up to your mercy and not to your wrath. Thank you, God, for that. Thank you for sending Jesus to solve our sin problem, and thank you for wanting to renew our commitment to you.
You give us that open invitation, and we’re so grateful. Lord, we love you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
